Cybercolumn by Jeanie Miley: Amazing Grace_62705

Posted: 6/30/05

CYBER COLUMN: Amazing Grace

By Jeanie Miley

From the time I was a child, I have loved “Amazing Grace,” both the song and the Reality.

When I was a child, however, I always tripped and fell over that line about grace teaching my heart to fear. Somehow, my mind couldn’t wrap itself around that concept, given the teaching about grace being “God’s unmerited favor.”

I already had enough fears, and it seemed to me that God, as I understood him then, would surely be about the business of taking away my fears rather than giving me more!

In adolescence, I learned that “fear,” in the biblical sense, was more akin to awe and reverence. I understood that fearing God wasn’t the same thing as fearing snakes or hurricanes, but still, I just couldn’t connect the idea of grace and fear.

Frankly, as a young adult, I still didn’t like that line about grace teaching me to fear. I had come to believe that loving someone into the kingdom was a great deal more in line with the nature of God than trying to scare them in.

Having come through a series of life’s losses and traumas, and having survived a few crises and deep disappointments along the way, I get it now about how grace teaches a heart to fear. I don’t much like it now any more than I did when I was younger, but I get it.

To get it about grace, however, I’ve had to expand my definition of grace to understand grace as God’s extravagant, tough love that will not let us rest until we have come to the place of knowing our utter dependence on him. And in that knowing, we are able to accept things as they are, and we accept that it is we who are the creatures and God the Creator.

All along the way of maturing, we human beings get to face the illusions and delusions that we hold in our minds, consciously and unconsciously, and the venue for those disillusionments is often trouble and trauma, heartache and loss, failure and frustration. Every single difficulty we human beings encounter along our chosen pathway introduces us to our limited and limiting notions of who God is to us and who we are to God, and that is grace.

Along the way of maturing, we collect our smaller gods that prove our achievements, accomplishments and our ability to acquire, and then grace comes along and shows us that we have worshipped at the thrones of people, substances, activities and things that are not nearly big enough gods for human beings, made in the image of God.

In the middle of our tragedies and our triumphs, it is grace, indeed, that shows us that we have given our hearts to idols, and that we must, in fact, turn our fear—our awe and reverence—toward the jealous God who wants us only for himself. It is grace that reveals our inordinate attachment to the lesser gods and then makes us face the awful truth about our idolatry. It is, indeed, grace that makes us fear having any other gods but God.

Grace beams its light into the places where we are separated from God, going our own way and missing the mark, and then, grace brings us to salvation and wholeness, of better choices and healthier, higher roads.

I sing that troubling line differently now, for I have enough battle scars to know that when you love God, it puts all of your other fears in their proper place. I have learned that it really is grace that shatters the false gods and all of their lies, and grace that relieves our fears.

It really is grace that leads us through all our dangers, toils and fears, and it is by grace that I know and declare that it is God alone who merits that “fear” that will, finally, lead us home.

Jeanie Miley is an author and columnist and a retreat and workshop leader. She is married to Martus Miley, pastor of River Oaks Baptist Church in Houston, and they have three adult daughters. Got feedback? Write her at Writer2530@aol.com.